This is a communiqué issued by members of civil society Participating in ‘Civil Society Experts Consultation on Maternal, Child and Infant Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Africa’ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 17-18, 2010, organised by Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR), IPPF-Africa Region, Ipas Africa Alliance, Save the Children International, Abantu for Development, and the UN Millennium Campaign in collaboration with the AU Commission to assess progress in reducing maternal, child and infant mortality and implementation of the Continental Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health (Maputo Plan of Action 2007-10):

Almost four weeks have already passed since the six of the seven Saharawi human right activists, held at the Moroccan prison of Sale, began their open hunger strike. Their were arrested and detained, on 8 October 2010, on their return from a family visit to the Saharawi refugees camps in south West of Algeria. The Moroccan government intends to bring them before a military court on account of that trip.

The Zanzibar International Film Festival is the largest multi disciplinary art and cultural festival in Africa. Dedicated to the exhibition of films, music and Panorama, each year over 150 films made in Africa, Middle East, Europe, Latin America, USA and Asia are exhibited. Currently ZIFF is accepting applications for all African films and films from the Dhow Countries region - South East Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, The Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and the Indian Ocean Islands.

This 10 week Creative Writing course will look at various techniques and exercises to open up & improve writing writing skills, work with metaphor and imagery, create texts and narratives to given themes and word counts as well as free writing. The end goal will be to write a 1000 word short story. There is no criteria other than a willingness to open up one's writing; the course is designed that people of varying writing experience can participate and each draw their individual benefits.

Sweet sixteen and already showing signs of strain: that is the mood that hangs over South Africa as the 27 April celebration of the first democratic elections approaches, writes Colleen Lowe Morna. The political shenanigans of the far right who still dream of a separate homeland for white people and far left who insist on singing the song “kill the Boer” even after the High Court ruled that this is hate speech have led the Mail and Guardian to coin the term “idiotocracy” to describe our national politics.

The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (LGEP) wrote to the President on 19 January 2010 regarding the appointment of John Qwelane to the post of High Commissioner to Uganda. Despite assurances that the matter would be addressed, there has been no reply, prompting this follow-up letter

The IBSA Fund, which finances anti-poverty projects in the most vulnerable countries, is an example of the spirit in which India, Brazil and South Africa wish to build their partnership, their leaders say. The fund was set up in 2004, one year after the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum was created, with annual contributions of one million dollars from each member. It currently supports reconstruction in Haiti after the January earthquake, agriculture in Guinea-Bissau, and projects in other African and Asian countries like Burundi and Cambodia.

The Harare International Festival of the Arts roars into life on April 27 at venues in and around the capital. Festival organisers held a pre-launch press briefing on Friday April 9th 2010 at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe where they unveiled the festival programme.

Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president Robert Zoellick to South Africa and the global climate? Notwithstanding South Africa's existing US$75 billion foreign debt, on April 8 the bank added a $3.75 billion loan to South Africa's electricty utility Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world's fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi. It will spew 25 million tons of the climate pollutant carbon dioxide into the air each year.

The Media Legal Defence Initiative is a non-governmental charity which works in all regions of the world to provide legal support to journalists and media outlets who seek to protect their right to freedom of expression. Founded in 2008, the Media Legal Defence Initiative was created to expand the resources available to assist the media to defend their rights in legal cases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need.

A new piece of kit in the form of a backpack could help small farmers in Kenya increase yields, profits and agricultural know-how in a sustainable way. The backpacks, weighing 15-42 kg, contain things which help farmers bring a crop to harvest, including tools, a training manual and, in some versions, a collapsible water tank. They are designed for small plots of land and are currently being used in the Mau Forest region.

A gay rights activist in Kenya is receiving death threats and has been attacked on several occasions by random people who have seen and read about him in an anti-gay website that publishes and puts up posters of suspected homosexuals in different cities of Kenya, as ‘NOT WANTEDs’. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) revealed this week, as it denounced the website , stating that it is a violation of rights and that it victimises people, in the name of religion.

A so-called Vulture Funds bill - to stop finance companies using British courts to extort excessive debt repayments from some of the world's poorest countries - was passed in the frantic scramble to finish outstanding parliamentary business before Britain's general election in May.

As the case of Millicent Gaika (30), a Cape Town lesbian who was beaten up and raped by a man known to her, is presently being heard at Wynberg Court, government has condemned the ongoing acts of “corrective rape” in the country and has vowed to put an end to them. After the man was arrested, the case was first heard at the Wynberg Court on Tuesday, 6 April but was postponed to today, Tuesday 13 April. Speaking outside the court where people are marching in support of Gaika, Ndumi Funda of Lulek’isisizwe LBT Women’s Project said, “We are strongly opposing bail for the perpetrator and we want to see justice being done for Gaika."

The effects of climate change - such as drought, livestock deaths and resource conflict - may be all too apparent for the pastoralists of northern Kenya, but there is much to be done to explain the true causes. "We were warned about the current situation by our elders and spiritual leaders when I was very young. This was about 50 years ago when the Ngishili age groups were born,” Lemeteki Lerinagato, 70, told IRIN in the Samburu district.

Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.

A shadow has fallen over Zambia's long history of generously hosting refugees from troubled countries since 36 foreigners were deported to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the government says it is only trying to ensure security and order in camps that still shelter some 57,000 people. "We are hoping that [deportations] will stop," said James Lynch, country representative for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Zambia. The organization communicated its alarm at the expulsions to the Zambian authorities on 13 April.

In this week's roundup of emerging actors news, Three steps to unleashing Africa's genius, China is ready for Ghanaian entrepreneurs, South Africa and China sign trade deals worth R2,3bn, Africa and India to boost cooperation in agricultural technologies for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The head of a 19-state African trading bloc has denied the Gulf’s policy of snapping up cheap farmland across the continent is tantamount to a ‘neo-colonialist’ land grab. Sindiso Ngwenya, secretary general of Comesa, which counts Kenya, Egypt, Sudan and Madagascar among its members, said multimillion-dollar land deals aimed at securing the Gulf’s food supply provide crucial capital to overhaul poverty-stricken rural areas and build infrastructure.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said that its new toolkit will highlight anti-hunger and development efforts by helping countries gather more accurate information on differences between men and women in agriculture.